


A Brokeback Moon

by masterroadtripper



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coming Out, Family Feels, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Running Away, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26883724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterroadtripper/pseuds/masterroadtripper
Summary: Jack is driving home from Texas after visiting Bobby on one of his court-allowed days when he sees a young boy walking alongside the highway, his thumb out to hitch a ride.  Taking a chance, since the boy looked harmless enough, Jack soon manages to open a can of worms that he could have never expected, but wouldn't want to change for the life of him.  He's just glad he chose to stop and pick up the young boy.
Relationships: Ennis Del Mar/Jack Twist
Comments: 9
Kudos: 137





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Every chapter will start with the name of the person who is speaking. I promise, "Jack Del Mar" is not a typo.

Jack Del Mar heard the crunching of tires on a poorly paved highway and extended his thumb, hoping the passing vehicle would be kind enough to slow to a stop and let him hitch a ride the rest of the way into Signal. If the vehicle was even going that way, of course. But, this far down the highway at this time in the night, Jack didn’t have a doubt in his mind that any vehicle going this way wouldn’t be stopping at the only town around for miles.

The vehicle slowed and Jack turned around, only to be blinded by the high beams that the driver hadn’t turned off. Blinking as his vision returned, Jack swallowed hard, hoping that that the driver saw him for who he was - a sixteen-year-old boy who’d run away from home with what he could stuff into his backpack three days ago. Armed with a butterfly knife in one pocket and a Christmas card with an address on it in the other, Jack approached the slowing vehicle.

Curling his fingers around the knife, he leaned through the window of the blue and white truck and noted that, while it smelt like smoke, it smelled a whole lot better than the Volkswagen camper van he’d hitched a ride in last night.

“Hey kid,” the driver said, the thick mustache wiggling around on his upper lip, “where ya headin’?”

“Signal,” Jack replied, forcing himself to make eye contact with the stranger.

“On my way there now,” the driver replied, “hop in.”

“Thanks, mister,” Jack said, popping open the door to the truck and climbing in.

A couple of miles down the highway, the truck finally having picked up speed again, Jack got the balls to look over at the stranger. He looked like a rancher. Like his own father, who Jack could barely remember now, the driver was dressed in a plaid shirt, jeans and a sheepskin jacket, a black cowboy hat resting on the dashboard. Jack remembered his dad always throwing his beige hat up onto the dash of the only truck he ever owned every time he drove him and his sister to school. Before mom had kicked their father out and they’d divorced.

That was eight years ago now and Jack could barely remember what his father even looked like. All he had from his father was a hand-carved wooden horse and a Christmas card from six months ago with a return address from Signal. The address belonged to the post office, but Jack hoped that he lived close to the town, if not actually in it.

“So,” the stranger said, a couple more minutes into their otherwise silent drive, “why ya’ headin’ ta’ Signal? I can tell ya’ now, not many ranches are hirin’, if thats your business. Looks like its gonna be a real bad summer for the ranchin’ business.”

“Aint lookin’,” Jack muttered a reply, voice just barely audible over the loud rumbling of the truck engine.

“Not much for talkin’, huh?” the stranger asked, his thick brown mustache quirking up into a grin in the dim light from a passing highway light.

“Not really,” Jack replied, tucking his hands between his knees and trying desperately not to squirm.

Looking over at the stranger, Jack had a funny feeling that he knew the man. It wasn’t his father, no, his father had curly blond hair, just like Jack did, but there was something about the man that was familiar.

Taking the first corner in the road, the stranger stretched a little and a flash of gold caught his eye in the light. A rodeo belt buckle.

Without help, Jack opened his mouth and blurted, “you rodeo?”

“Used to,” the stranger replied, “Used ta be the damned best in the state. But it busts ya’ up real fast. Why, you comin’ out ta’ Signal ta rodeo kid? There aint a big scene for that here either.”

“Uh, no, not really,” Jack admitted, “just, liked watchin’ it as a kid. Would watch it on the television with my dad.”

It was one of the only things his father watched on the rare occasion that he hadn’t fallen asleep the second he got home. But Jack would swear on his mother’s life that this stranger was one of the rodeo cowboys that his father would watch either when it was live or on reruns. He had to be. That was the only thing that made sense to Jack. He’d seen this man on tv, that was the only explanation. Jack wouldn’t admit that out loud, but he slouched in the seat a little and smirked to himself.

“So your dad rodeoed,” he asked, “what’s his name, maybe I met ‘im on the circuit.”

“I aint think he ever did,” Jack replied, “He just worked random construction jobs.”

“Ya’ got both your parents,” the man muttered, “so what’re you doin’ hitchhiking in tha’ middle ‘a Wyoming at near midnight?”

“Lookin’ for my dad,” Jack admitted quietly. He didn’t know exactly why he said that to a complete stranger, but maybe that was the whole concept of talking to a stranger. You were never going to see them again anyways. Why not tell them the truth?

“Your da’?” the man said with a snort, “how old are ya’ anyways kid?”

“Sixteen,” Jack admitted, holding his breath.

“Damn kid, you’re tiny for sixteen,” the man said, turning on his blinker and turning onto a different highway, the sign on the side of the road indicating that Signal was thirteen miles away.

“I know,” Jack muttered.

He knew he was small and probably always would be. When his older sister was sixteen, she was already taller than their mother, and would probably have been closer in height to their father, had he still been around. The night Jack ran away from Riverton in the passenger seat of a semi-truck, he’d been just barely taller than their mother. And not by a lot. It got on Jack’s nerves, that he was so small. It made him look like he was closer to ten than sixteen, and in jeans that were too big, but baggy in just the right ways, he looked even smaller.

“Ya’ got a place ta’ stay for the night kid?” the stranger asked, the truck heaving and creaking as they jostled through half a dozen potholes before hitting the smooth highway again.

“Not really,” Jack admitted, “was goin’ ta’ go lookin’ for my dad in the morning.”

“Well, how ‘bout this,” the man started to propose, “You stay at my ranch for the night, get a good sleep and then I’ll drive ya’ back into town tomorrow morning and you can look for your da’ then? You look like ya’ aint slept in days. Maybe should even get a good meal into you.”

“Why’re you doin’ this?” Jack asked, scooching over as far as humanly possible until his back was almost flush against the door of the truck.

“Because you’re sixteen. Ya’ can’t just sleep on the streets in Signal, that aint gonna work,” the man said, “but if ya’ really don’t want ta’, I aint gonna make you. I can drop ya’ off wherever ya’ want, you just say the word.”

When Jack said nothing, thoughts spinning too fast again, the man said, “well, how ‘bout this, you got a name kid? That makes you feel more comfortable? My name’s Jack Twist.”

“Umm,” Jack muttered, thoughts racing quickly onto another path faster than he thought was humanly possible before sputtering out a quick, “Jack Del Mar.”

“Beggin’ your pardon,” the man said, his head whipping away from the unlit highway to look Jack in the eye before asking, “you say Del Mar?”

“Yes sir,” Jack said, his hope spiking for the second time that night, “you know my dad?”

“Oh good lord,” the man - Jack Twist, with an ironic first name considering the circumstances - said with a laugh, “You aint never gonna believe me.”

“Believe what?” Jack asked.

“That your dad owns half the ranch,” Mr. Twist said with a snort, letting his head fall back against the truck seat behind him, “Oh lord kid. You’re one of Ennis’s aint ya?”

“You...you know him? You live with him?” Jack asked, his voice jumping almost an octave into its more natural range.

“Well, I aint said I live with him. Just...we's business partners” Mr. Twist said, his voice suddenly pinched, “But I aint realize tha’ Ennis had a baby boy. He only ever talked ‘bout Alma Jr. and Jenny. Tha’s damn strange it is.”

“Yeah,” Jack agreed nervously, returning to looking out the window as they pulled into Signal.

What was he going to tell his dad? Jack had never thought about that until this very moment. For all his planning, Jack had never got past how he’d actually end up finding his dad. Yet, now, he was here and he had to think about something fast.


	2. Chapter 2

Ennis Del Mar knew that Jack didn’t like it when he stayed up, waiting for him to get back from his trips to Texas. But on the day that Jack would drive home from seeing Bobby, he couldn’t help but be a little twitchy that something was going to happen. Jack would always say that it wasn’t good for Ennis to stay up so late when he would get up so early the next morning, but Ennis just couldn’t help it.

Every damn time Jack left the ranch, Ennis was worried something would happen to him. That someone would have finally figured out what he and Jack had going on up at Brokeback Ranch and that he’d get a call from the sheriff that something had happened. But it never did, and as he heard the crackling of tires on the gravel leading up to their old wood-frame house, Ennis smiled to himself in the dark. Jack made it back safe.

He listened for the familiar sounds of the front door unlocking, then opening. Hearing boots being kicked off in the mudroom, hearing the door lock again, hearing the jingle of keys as they were hooked onto the nail beside the door. Then the creaking of the stairs as he made his way up to the second floor to collapse into bed.

But as he heard socked feet almost jogging up the stairs, two at a time, Ennis realized something was wrong. Jack never ran in the house, unless the call of nature really got to him. Sitting upright in their bed, extinguishing the cigarette he’d been slowly burning through in the soup tin on his night table, the bedroom door banged open.

“Ennis, ya never told me ya’ ‘ad a baby boy,” Jack said, voice huffed and heaving like he’d just ran a marathon.

“I don’t,” Ennis said plainly, wondering what Jack had gotten himself into a twist about. Because that was Jack Twist, through and through.

“Well, then youse gonna want ta come downstairs and talk ta’ the kid sayin’ you’re his daddy,” Jack said challengingly, hands on his hips as he did anytime he was particularly mad.

Instead of saying anything, Ennis stood from the bed and grabbed the shirt from the laundry basket that he’d been wearing earlier in the day. Pulling it onto his frame, Ennis scratched his head and tried to think if he’d ever done anything with a girl other than Alma. Because, unless he was so drunk he’d forgotten it, he was certain it hadn’t happened. And, well, Jack couldn’t get pregnant. So this kid either had to be one of Alma and Monroe’s or was delusional.

Rounding the corner into the kitchen, he saw the kid. A grey knit hat rolled into two small hands, shoulders hunched inwards with awkwardly cut curly blond hair, a pair of green eyes slowly looked up from the floor to him before darting back down. But this was one of his. Jenny. Even though she was dressed in baggy jeans that were likely her older sister’s and a jacket way too thin for the weather, Ennis knew it was her.

Taking a step closer, Ennis cocked his head slightly before asking, “Jenny?”

“I’m sorry,” Jenny said, “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have come here, I’m just going to leave, I’m real sorry for interrupting your night.”

Ennis was startled by the speed in which she took off, but he had no doubt in his mind that something was wrong with his little girl. What had happened to her hair, Ennis had no idea, but he figured there was an explanation. Everything had an explanation. So, instead of letting her get any farther away, Ennis blocked her retreat and gripped her shoulders gently but firmly.

“Jenny Del Mar, ya’ aint goin’ anywhere till ya’ tell me what youse doin’ in Signal,” Ennis said before motioning to the kitchen table, “sit. We’s gonna talk ‘bout this, right now.”

Thankfully, Jenny agreed without a fight and pulled out a chair before collapsing into it, exhaustion suddenly written all over her features. She didn’t look up at either of them, Ennis now standing directly across the table from her and Jack in the doorframe between the mudroom at the kitchen, like he thought she was going to bolt.

“So what’s goin’ on darlin’? Does your ma know youse out here?” Ennis asked.

“Mom aint know,” Jenny muttered, a tear tracking down her cheek, “Just say youse aint want nothing ta’ do with me already, don’t draw it out!”

“Jenny Del Mar,” Ennis said firmly, making her snap her head up to look at him, “Youse my blood, okay, nothin’ youse gonna tell me is gonna make me kick ya’ out.”

“You sure?” she said, gaze not wavering from his, like some kind of messed up staring contest.

Something had scared her. Jenny was always easier to spook than Alma Jr., Ennis knew. Even as a baby, when he’d come back from his fishing trips with Jack in the night, the sound of keys in the door to their crappy apartment would wake his sleeping baby. Then she’d cry for hours. Heck, she’d start crying if Alma Jr. jumped out from behind a door to scare her on purpose.

This wasn’t just one of her sister’s jump scares though. Something had happened back in Riverton and Ennis needed to know who he had to go have words with. He didn’t care if he had to face his ex-wife or her rich grocer boyfriend, something had happened to one of his babies.

“Certain,” Ennis replied.

“And how ‘bout your business partner, he's gonna kick me out?” Jenny asked, looking over her shoulder briefly towards where Jack was still leaning against the doorframe.

“Aint doin’ a thing,” Jack confirmed and Ennis smiled at him. They needed Jenny to trust them, and even though Jack had been the one to find his baby, likely hitchhiking - yet another topic to discuss with the both of them - this was a step in the right direction.

“Now youse gonna tell me what happened?” Ennis asked, “Or am I gonna have ta’ phone your mom?”

“No,” Jenny exclaimed before letting her voice drop back down to a normal talking level, “please don’t tell mom and Monroe I’m here.”

“Not sure I can do tha’,” Ennis admitted, “but I can listen ta’ your side ‘a the story first.”

“They kicked me out,” Jenny said softly, letting her head drop down to look at her lap again, wringing the grey knit cap in her hands, “It aint ‘cause I got pregnant or nothin’. I cut off my hair and she aint likes it. Monroe liked it even less. He got real mad when I did it.”

“They kicked you out ‘cause ‘a that?” Jack exclaimed from his place in the doorframe.

“Not all it,” Jenny replied and Ennis could have sworn that she’d started holding her breath in that moment. Jaw grinding against itself and chin jutting out just like Jack told him he always did when he was thinking too hard, Ennis wondered if Jenny would ever be able to get the words out.

“Why’d you say ya’ name was Jack?” Jack asked, “in the truck, when I asked. You gave the right last name, but why Jack? Tryin’ ta’ travel safe or somethin’?”

“No,” Jenny whispered, “Is ‘cause I like it better than Jenny.”

“So, youse wanted your ma ta’ call youse Jack not Jenny and she kicked you out?” Jack asked.

“Basically,” the small blond kid in front of them muttered, tears now dripping down both cheeks.

Ennis, while he did have a reputation as a cold-hearted bastard, hated to see his family upset, whether it was either of his kids or Jack.

“C’mon lil’ darlin’,” Ennis said, moving around the table, “is late, we can talk ‘gain in the mornin’.”

“You’re letting me stay?” the soft voice asked, accompanied by the haphazard bounce of shortened blond curls as green eyes met his brown ones.

“Said we would, did we?” Ennis said, “C’mon, I’ll pull out the couch, you go get changed.”

“Bathroom’s that way,” Jack said, pointing down the hall to one of the only doors that was propped open. Ennis just hoped that Jenny wouldn't try to run away before the morning rolled around and they could try to have a proper conversation. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first two chapters are posted, for now, I'm working on the rest and hopefully, they'll get posted soon.


	3. Chapter 3

Jack Twist tugged Ennis close to him as he heard their farmyard rooster crowing its fool head off from on top of the chicken coop, not quite yet ready to face the day. He wondered how well Ennis had slept that night, all things considered. With a little one sleeping on their couch downstairs combined with Ennis already having enough on his mind with one of their best calving cows passing just last week and having to replace some parts in the engine of his truck when it wouldn’t start the other morning, Jack bet that he hadn’t slept a wink.

Looking over at his brown-eyed darling, Jack smiled to himself when he saw that Ennis hadn’t even seemed to have heard the rooster, his eyes - ringed with dark purple - still firmly shut. Carefully extricating himself from their bed and tucking the quilt back into the space that he’d just vacated, Jack striped out of his plaid sleep pants and tugged on his jeans and the red button up that Ennis liked so much. Pulling on a mismatched pair of socks, Jack padded out of their bedroom, taking one more look back at his sleeping man. The frown and grimace that usually covered his features absent as he slept, Ennis looked like the nineteen-year-old boy that he’d fallen in love with up at Brokeback Mountain twenty years ago.

Sleeping, Ennis’s youngest looked just like him. Of course, considerably smaller and more timid and frail, but the features remained nonetheless. Looking over at the small child, still tucked into the extra covers Ennis had found in the hall closet, Jack wondered what was going on. What was this child not telling them?

Jack liked to think that he was a pretty open-minded guy. As he dumped a scoop full of coffee into the machine they’d bought last winter, he thought back to some of the people he and Ennis had met one their road trip to Castro in San Francisco. Oddly enough, that trip had been Ennis’s idea. After he and Alma divorced and they bought the ranch together, Jack taking JD Newsome’s offer to get lost and divorce his daughter, Ennis had come home one day with a newspaper and said that he wanted to try to drive to San Francisco.

They had only had the ranch for a couple of years when they’d loaded up Jack’s blue and white truck and had driven seventeen hours to the coast of California. Unable to leave the ranch unattended for too long, they’d only stayed three days, but in that time, they’d met a handful of incredible people, one of whom Jack still thought he had her number. If it hadn’t changed in the five years since they’d been there.

Pulling out the address book that sat in the cupboard next to Ennis’s box of cereal, Jack leafed through the pages, almost in time to the dripping of the coffee machine until he found his own handwritten entry for one Anne Cassidy. Taking the book over to their wall-mounted phone - a recent addition to the house - Jack dialled in the number and waited, hoping desperately that it wasn’t too early in the morning and that he wasn’t going to wake her.

“Hello?” a slightly sleepy-sounding voice said, the call finally connecting.

“Mornin’, can I speak ta’ Anne Cassidy?” Jack said, closing the address book and placing it on the counter.

“Who’s asking?” the voice on the line said.

“Jack Twist, from Wyoming. We’s met a couple ‘a years back,” Jack said, scratching his mustache a little and vaguely considering shaving it off, yet again. He was pretty sure that Ennis wouldn’t make one squeak worth of protest if he did that, but he also knew that the man would never obviously give him an opinion either way.

“Oh Jack,” Anne exclaimed over the line, “its so good to hear from you again!”

“Yeah,” Jack replied with a huff of a laugh before continuing, “I’m just goin’ ta cut to the chase here though.”

“Absolutely Jack, what's going on?” Anne said.

Jack took a massive breath before saying, “Ennis’s little girl - Jenny - came ta’ us last night and said she wants ta’ be called Jack now. Told her mother and got herself kicked out and came ta’ us. I don’t wanna scare her, but I aint know what ta’ do and I was thinkin’ you’d have an idea?”

“Oh Jack, you got a Jack Junior on your hands now, don’t you?” Anne said and he swore that he could hear her smiling through the phone, “Is Ennis’s little one awake yet?”

“Nah, still passed out on the couch. Poor thing hadn’t slept in days,” Jack reported.

“Are you okay with what Ennis’s little one told you? You do realize how hard it would be for them to tell you that,” Anne said, voice suddenly serious and Jack could picture the woman in all of her six-foot-plus glory scolding him or punching him square in the nose if he said something intentionally insensitive.

“Is okay with me, ya’ know that Anne, I’m real okay with everyone,” Jack replied.

“I know, but sometimes in theory and in practice are two different things,” Anne said, “But you want to understand why Ennis’s little one came to you?”

“Well, I figure is just ‘cause she aint got nowhere else ta’ go, seein’ as things with her mom didn’t go well,” Jack replied, tucking the phone between his shoulder and his ear, tugging on the cord to go make himself the cup of coffee he so desperately needed.

“Jack, first thing you can do? Call them by the right name. They said they wanted to be called Jack, you call them Jack,” Anne said, “Second, do you know if they would rather be referred to as “he”?”

“I dunno Anne,” Jack replied, rolling the new information around in his head. Yeah, that made sense to him. Jenny wants to be called Jack, he could do that. Jack Del Mar Jr. He liked the sound of that, in fact.

“Jack Jr. just found us last night and was so wiped that we jus’ sent ‘em ta’ bed right away,” Jack continued.

“Well, that’s the next thing you ask, okay?” Anne said and when Jack grunted in affirmative, “next, what does Jack Jr. know about you and Ennis?”

“Think’s we’s business partners. Is what I told ‘em when I picked ‘em up off the side ‘a the highway last night. Swear to god Anne, didn’t know the kid was Ennis’s, just thought it was some young man lookin’ ta’ hitchhike inta’ Signal,” Jack said, wanting to laugh at himself. What kind of wild luck that he’d been driving home from Texas that night and had just happened to cross paths with Jack Jr?

“Talk with Ennis, I know how cagey he was about telling people about the two of you - even all those years ago in The Castro, of all places on this earth - but maybe Jack Jr. deserves to know. Might help ease things, you know?” Anne suggested before asking, “do you mind if I have a talk with Ennis’s little one? I know they’re still sleeping, but I’d be willing to do it later today if you are okay with it.”

“Think thats a real good idea Anne,” Jack agreed, “I’ll ask.”

“For now? Find some of Ennis’s old clothes and let his little one wear them. Poor thing probably needs something more comfortable to wear. Get some food into them, and then phone me back, okay? You know me, I love helping,” Anne ordered.

“A’course, is why I phoned you, straight ‘way,” Jack replied, “thanks for everythin’ Anne. I promise I’ll phone more often.”

“No problem,” Anne said, “and you get that man of yours on the phone sometimes, I want to hear about the ranch.”

They hung up after a couple more moments of conversation and Jack found himself turning to suddenly be face to face with Jack Jr., still dressed in their clothes from yesterday, grey knit hat in their small grasp, looking at him expectantly.

“That wasn’t my momma, was it?” Jack Jr. asked, voice soft like Ennis’s, but not raspy. At least they seemed to not have caught onto Ennis’s smoking habit yet.

Jack looked at the small child in front of him and wondered what had truly been said all those days ago when Alma and Monroe kicked their own child to the curb. He might not understand what was going through Jack Jr.’s head at that moment, but he did understand not being accepted by society. The fear and the internal disgust that he knew Ennis suffered from so much worse than he ever had.

“Hey,” Jack said, “I aint never phonin’ your ma or Monroe if you don’t want me to. I aint know what your da thinks ‘bout that, but I can tell him you don’t want them ta’ know you’re here, okay?”

“How do you know Monroe?” Jack Jr. asked, head cocked to the side like that barn dog they found a couple of summers ago would do when Ennis tried to get the animal to accomplish something.

“Ennis - your da’ - told me ‘bout him a couple ‘a times,” Jack lied. He’d heard about Monroe more than once and how much Ennis despised the man, regardless of how much he wanted his kids and Alma to be happy.

“You hungry kid?” Jack asked, sidestepping Jack Jr. to put his now luke-warm coffee into the microwave that they’d gotten second hand from a ranch down the way that Ennis had gotten friendly with.

Jack Jr. just shrugged, so Jack said, “Well, your da usually cooks breakfast, but since he aint awake yet, you want coffee?”

“You aint cook?” the youngest Del Mar asked, looking at him funny.

“Well, I _can_ cook, but if ya’ like anything better than beans or burnt eggs, usually your da’ just does it,” Jack said before feeling himself adding, “When I met your da’, up on Brokeback, he never let me cook, and I always made a real big mess. Guess nothin’s really changed in twenty years.”

Jack Jr. said nothing but pulled out a chair at the table, uninclined to make a cup of coffee or interact with him in any way. But as the kid looked around the room, Jack watched as their eyes caught on the stairs, where Ennis was now coming down.

“Mmm,” Ennis grunted, rubbing at his face and seeming to have temporarily forgotten about their young guest, “why’d you not wake me up?”


	4. Chapter 4

Jack Del Mar watched as his dad walked down the stairs in nothing but a pair of jeans and a white tank top, the button-up he’d been wearing yesterday in his hand, rubbing at his eyes with the other hand.

Alma Jr. had a boyfriend, and sometimes she’d come home with these really red marks on her neck that she’d cover up with her long hair or makeup. “From kissing with Troy,” Alma Jr. told him once when he’d asked. Now, Jack wished that he’d never asked that because seeing those same types of marks on his father’s collarbones was something he realized at that moment he really never needed to know about. That his dad was kissing someone. That was a thought Jack realized he never needed to have.

“Oh, mornin’ Jenny,” his dad grunted as he almost walked right into the chair Jack had been sitting in before going digging into the pockets of the beige coat hanging by the door in the mudroom, “I’m gonna have a smoke and then I’ll get somethin’ cooked up, yeah?”

With that, his father disappeared out the back door and out onto the wrap-around porch of the house.

“Don’t mind him kid, just a little cranky in the mornin's. Always has been. I always jus' let him have his smoke and then try ta’ deal with him. Easier that way,” Mr. Twist said before adding, “I’m just gonna go have a word with him, yeah?”

Jack found himself shrugging and watched as Mr. Twist went to go join his father outside.

In proper lighting, out the big window that the couch sat under, Jack could see the massive mountains just miles from the house. Surrounded by what looked like cattle, Jack wondered how many of those massive beasts belonged to this ranch, that Mr. Twist and his father owned together.

Standing from the table, Jack wandered towards a couple of framed pictures. There were a couple of him and Alma Jr. from before the divorce - when they were so much younger. None of the pictures included his mother, which really, wasn’t a surprise to Jack in the slightest.

Any and all of his memories of his parents together usually included thick silence or loud arguing. Jack wondered if it had anything to do with this ranch. With his father not wanting to live in Riverton. He did seem a lot happier now than Jack could ever remember from before.

Besides the pictures of him and Alma Jr., there was a handful of pictures of a young boy. It seemed to be the same kid in all the pictures, though, through them, he was growing. In some of them he was wearing jeans and a cowboy hat, some of them he was holding a baseball bat and in one, he was sitting in a massive piece of farm equipment, on the lap of a man wearing a black cowboy hat.

Looking over his shoulder, Jack could have sworn he saw that same hat hanging off the hook besides a beige one.

Maybe this was Mr. Twist’s son. Maybe he’d gotten divorced too. Maybe that was why they’d bought this ranch. Maybe they’d bought the ranch together. Maybe they were…

No. Mom said that they divorced because things just weren’t working. She promised it wasn’t because of him and Alma Jr. That it just wasn’t right for them. She never said…

But what if she didn’t know? Suddenly, Jack wondered if that was why his dad would watch the rodeo on the tv. Sure he could have just liked watching it…

No. He would watch one or two rides with intent, then he’d get a beer and have a smoke. He would only ever cheer for one rider. He would only hold his breath when one rider got thrown off the bull. He’d only watch the Texas circuit. He’d been watching Jack Twist. That had to be it…

But it couldn’t be. His dad loved his mom. That was why he and Alma Jr. existed. But what about Candace Sweet at church? She hadn’t been married when she’d had her baby. Mom always Candace didn’t even know who the father was. That couldn’t have been love, and yet little baby Tommy still showed up. Did they not love each other…

Did that mean that all those fishing trips all those years...all those postcards...the beige vest that had shown up one day...the fighting...the crying...the divorce...this ranch...those marks on his collarbone...was Ennis Del Mar…

No. Jack refused to think like that. There had to be something else. There had to be.

Turning around, even though Jack knew it was probably not his place, he looked out towards where his dad and Mr. Twist were standing out on the porch. Their shoulders were touching and while it must have not been very warm outside yet, his father was not yet wearing his shirt yet.

It seemed like they were talking, their jaws moving minutely, though, even from here, Jack could tell that Mr. Twist was doing much more of the talking than his father was.

Going back to sit at the table, Jack crossed his arms and tried to make sense of his thoughts. He had to get them in order because they were going to ask again what was wrong. What had happened. Jack didn’t know if he could even come up with anything to say because, well, it didn’t even make sense to him.

As far back as Jack could remember, he’d wanted to be just like his father. A cowboy, a rancher, a journeyman. A boy. He’d just always wanted that. Just like Alma Jr. had always talked about holding her breath for the day that she got breasts, Jack had waited for the day that their mother would see that he was a boy.

But, something, somewhere, didn’t get the memo, because, just like his sister and his mother, things started changing in the wrong direction and suddenly, every time Jack looked in the mirror after stepping out of the shower, he wanted to puke at what he saw. Because he was a boy. Jack knew he was. And yet, there he was, looking less and less like one every day.

After crying himself to sleep one too many nights in a row, Jack found his sister’s craft scissors and cut off all of his brownish-blond curls. It looked horribly uneven but Jack loved it. The next morning, when being interrogated at the kitchen table, Jack had told mom and Monroe that he wanted to be called Jack.

Five minutes grace was all that he’d gotten before Monroe had grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and was dragged to the front door, told to leave and never come back. He was unwanted in his own house.

Jack spent the rest of that day at the one park in Riverton that their dad had always taken them to on the rare occasion that the court gave him time with him and his sister. Digging around in the small bag Jack had been able to stuff full of clothes, he found the small card that he’d gotten from his father that Christmas. The return address was from Signal, Wyoming and as Jack walked towards the Greyhound station near the highway, he held out his thumb, hoping a trucker would be heading that way.

The first trucker took him as far as Crowheart. The whole next day, Jack just walked. Not a single person stopped for him and as every road sign passed, he wondered when the next town would be. The day after that, there was a Volkswagen of hippies that took him as far as Dunoir. The day after that, after walking well into the night, the white and blue truck had pulled up beside him. The truck he could now see parked out in the yard between the old baby blue horse truck his father had kept around and the ancient navy blue truck that his father had owned for as long as Jack could remember. He would be surprised if the old thing would even still run.

Resting his head on his hand, Jack could feel his eyes slipping shut again, the exhaustion from the past few days catching up to him as he relished in just sitting and not having to worry too hard about anything. At the moment, he was as safe as he was going to be.

He trusted his dad and Mr. Twist. They said they weren’t going to kick him out. He believed them.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're a fellow Canadian, I hope you had a good long weekend/Thanksgiving! I'm back with some more of this story now.

Anne Cassidy smiled to herself as she hooked the phone back onto where it hung from the wall. Every now and then, she’d caught herself thinking about the two kind cowboys that she’d met by accident, all those years ago at a gas station on the outskirts of the Castro district.

The two young men had been filling up a blue and white pickup truck while Anne had been topping up her own black Oldsmobile. She had been assuming that the young cowboys would be the ones to say something to her, but instead, some other asshole had come over and tried to pick a fight with her.

Anne really had no idea what possessed people to do that, but there she was, eye to eye with a man who easily had one hundred pounds of muscle on her and was threatening to beat her into the next century. Sadly, it wasn't an uncommon occurrence by any means, though rare for in Castro proper. The man had only been a couple of sentences into his tirade when the young blond-haired boy in a blue plaid shirt, jeans and a beige cowboy hat on his head had put himself between her and the man and told him in just as few words to get lost.

Once the man had taken that as his cue that he was outnumbered, he’d left and the young cowboy had asked if she was okay. If he’d seemed startled or confused that Anne’s voice was a little lower than most women or that her cheekbones were a little higher than most, he didn’t mention it. She wondered where she’d be able to find herself a cowboy like this one day.

“You okay ma’am?” he’d asked, his voice thick with a Wyoming accent, deep and raspy, likely from the cigarette she could smell on his clothes.

“Better now thanks,” she’d replied, just as another cowboy - this one in a plain black button-up and a black hat - approached them, having come out of the bathrooms at the station.

“Ennis, what’s goin’ on, heard shoutin’,” he’d called to the blond - Ennis - looking equal parts worried and confused.

At the moment when the blond boy’s head whipped around to face the voice he obviously recognized, she saw the two of them as the couple they were so obviously trying to hide. Though, they’d come to The Castro, so, they’d figured something out. The way the blond’s brown eyes widened in relief, the way his posture changed minutely. The way that the black-haired boy’s eyes softened and he looked seconds from pulling the other into a bone-crushing hug before thinking better of it.

What could she say, she used to be a detective with the SFPD. Anne knew how to read people and she could plainly see that these two were head-over-heels for each other. Which is why she then invited them back to the restaurant her best friend ran for a cup of coffee and a slice of pie. The two shared a look before agreeing.

Then, almost five years later, after only receiving a Christmas card from the two every year, she’d picked up the phone at a ridiculous hour in the morning to one frantic and confused sounding Jack Twist from Wyoming. He’d explained his situation and while she felt for Ennis’s kid - who was struggling through what would likely be the most confusing and painful stages of their life - she was so glad to hear that Jack and Ennis were trying to understand. That they were trying to help.

Anne would never have considered the two boys from Brokeback Ranch the most educated people on this planet. When they’d sat down at Brew and Bake in Castro with her, she could tell that they were struggling to take in everything happening around them. That there were people on this planet just like them. That no matter what people said, they did deserve a life together and they deserved the opportunity to love each other.

That’s why Anne had offered to talk with Jack Jr. To have the opportunity to prove that there were other people out there that were just like them. That they were not alone. Anne wished she hadn’t waited until 1970 to move to San Francisco for the exact same opportunity to unfold in front of her. For the opportunity to have met Harvey Milk, to have been a part of his campaign, to mourn his death with people who understood why they needed him to have existed in the first place.

Now, five years later, as Anne jumped up from the table in her small, cramped apartment as the wall phone rang for the second time that morning she held her breath to see who was going to answer.

Answering with a perfectly neutral, “good morning,” just in case it wasn’t either of the boys from Wyoming phoning her back.

She heard the raspy grunt that couldn’t belong to anyone else other than Ennis say, “mornin’ Anne.”

“Jack made you pick up, didn’t he?” she teased him, just for old times sake.

“Yeah,” Ennis grunted. Anne smiled. He was still such a man of few words - probably even less now that they lived in the middle of nowhere and there was no reason for him to have to talk to anyone.

“Did Jack talk to you about what I told him this morning?” Anne asked.

“Yeah,” Ennis replied, “Said it was a real good idea ta’ let Jenny talk with you.”

“Jack Jr.,” Anne corrected, knowing Ennis meant nothing malicious by letting his youngest’s birth name slip. If she remembered right, they were probably close to sixteen years old now, and Ennis was working through a learning curve.

“Yeah,” Ennis agreed, “well, ‘e’s standin’ right ere.”

Suddenly, there was shuffling noises over the line before a small and timid voice said, “hello?”

“Hey kid,” Anne said, “my name’s Anne, I’m a friend of your dad’s. He asked if I could talk to you, just for a little, okay? And if you want, you can give the phone back to him or Jack Twist whenever you’re ready. Deal?”

“Deal,” the soft voice muttered. A true Del Mar at heart.

“What’s your name kid?” Anne asked, figuring it was better to start simple.

“Jenny Del Mar,” the kid said before hesitating a little, voice going impossibly softer yet still managing to add, “but I like Jack better.”

“Jack is a good name kid,” Anne replied, feeling a smile breaking through, “are you liking living with your dad so far?”

“Yeah,” Jack Jr. said, “but wasn’t like I had a choice.”

“Well, I think your dad is very happy to have you living with him. He talks about you and your sister all the time,” Anne said, just to soften the next blow a little by asking, “And Jack, are you a boy? Because Jack is a very strong name for a boy.”

“No ma’am. Just...always wanted ta’ be, I guess,” Jack Jr. replied and that was when Anne realized that there was a lot that this young man had to learn and she was already thinking through all the resources she had that she could send their way.

“See Jack,” Anne started, “when I was born, my parents thought I was their little baby boy. Got all the right mechanics, must be right? But god, or whomever you believe in, made a mistake. He meant to give you the right mechanics but there was a little slip-up. So, Jack, you are a boy. A wonderful young man - from what your father has told me - but the mechanics are just a little different. Does that sound about right?”

There was a second in which Anne had wondered if Jack Jr. had panicked and hung up the call, but then she heard a soft sniffle before the small voice making a, “mhmm,” noise over the line.

“Do you want your dad and Jack Twist to call you Jack?” Anne asked.

“Mhmm,” was the answer. Like father like son, Anne thought to herself with a smile.

“And you’re Ennis Del Mar’s son, not his daughter?” Anne continued.

“Yeah,” Jack Jr. finally managed to force out, “I’d like that.”

“There you go,” Anne said cheerfully, her heart feeling light. While still concerned for Jack Jr., suddenly, she wasn’t quite so worried. It was like he’d figured everything out on his own, just needed someone to confirm it for him. Someone to say the words for him.

“Do you feel comfortable telling your dad that, or do you want me to tell him?” Anne asked though she figured she already knew the answer.

“Could you,” Jack Jr. started before audibly swallowing and trying again, “could you tell him?”

“Absolutely Jack,” Anne agreed, the sounds of a shuffling phone over the line again.

This was what she loved about working at Brew and Bake. Teaching, mentoring and making sure that young kids had a path in life. Knew they weren't alone. Sure the bakery barely paid the bills, but what she didn’t make in money was made up from the warm feeling of contributing to a community. Talking to kids just like Jack Jr. Meeting their parents. Making their lives better. 


	6. Chapter 6

Ennis Del Mar fired up the stove after he passed the phone over to his Jack from talking with Anne. Even though his fingers were itching for another smoke, his stomach was currently protesting the lack of breakfast with an insistent passion, so that was task number one. He could smoke the whole rest of the day out on the range if he really wanted to, and damn, did he want to.

Ennis tried to understand everything. He really did. He tried to see the world through other people’s eyes, and he tried to understand why he thought the way he did. Sure it was hard, but he tried. Ever since he’d met Jack Twist and that one rough night in the tent had turned his world upside down, he’d started trying to understand why he was so scared of what he felt. When he’d finally told Jack about what his father had shown him in the irrigation ditch and why that was his fear. How he’d tried to change over the years.

He was being tested. Someone or something was testing him. Ennis didn’t really find himself believing in a higher power, but if there was one out there, they were testing him right now, he was sure of it.

Ennis loved both his kids with a burning passion. Throughout the years, he would have done anything for them. For Alma and Monroe, not so much, but for Alma Jr. and Jenny, he would quit a hundred jobs and a hundred more just to be considered worthy of being their father. Even before the divorce, he knew he could get really mean to Alma sometimes, but never to his girls. He’d promised Jack, on one of the few fishing trips they’d gone on together before the divorce, that, no matter what happened, he’d never do what his father had done to him to his girls. Never. He loved them. His precious little angels.

Yet here was his youngest, sitting at the table, picking at a loose thread on the grey knit hat, shaggy and awkwardly cut brown hair falling in front of thin features and eyes that looked lifeless. Looking but not seeing, awaiting judgement.

Ennis knew he could stop the pain in those eyes right now if he just had the guts to open his mouth and say something, but every time he tried, he could feel the creep of the proverbial barbed wire closer and closer to his adam’s apple and he would shut his mouth as soon as it was opened.

His Jack had tried for a while to get his youngest to talk, but after one too many monosyllabic grunts, it seemed as if Jack had given up and returned his attention to the newspaper in front of him, just like every other morning they’d shared together for the last eight years.

He smiled to himself though, thinking over the past eight years they’d shared together. Because, while Ennis was hoping for many more to come, he could certainly die tomorrow and be a happy man. Twenty years after meeting Jack and they’d finally built a life together in view of the mountains they’d met on.

Looking up from where he was frying some eggs, Ennis’s gaze flew over the range he could see out the window. Past their yard, past the tractors, past the cows and the fence lines, up to the foothills of the mountains and just to the north of where the sun’s rays were breaking on the mountains, he could see Brokeback.

Briefly, Ennis wondered what Mr. Aguirre was up to nowadays if he knew that the Brokeback Ranch at the end of Township Road 442 belonged to the two, nineteen-year-old cowboys that he’d hired all those summers ago to watch his sheep. Considering they’d crossed paths in town once and Aguirre hadn’t even said a thing, Ennis doubted the man recognized them anymore.

“Eggs are almost done,” Ennis reported without clearing his throat, so he knew it came out sounding a little garbled, but considering he’d gotten all of three hours of sleep last night and he’d only had one smoke, Ennis couldn’t find it in himself to care at the moment.

“Wanna go wash up?” his Jack’s rumbling voice asked, no doubt aimed at the teen who seemed rooted to the table. The sound of a chair scraping across the floor followed and then, suddenly, the teenage presence was down the hall and his Jack was behind him.

“Hey darlin’,” Jack said, getting close behind Ennis and pressing them together, chest to thighs.

“Jack,” Ennis said, squirming away and making space between them again before hissing, “we got’s a little one in the house.”

“You heard what Anne said,” Jack said, giving Ennis one swift poke in his soft sides with his fingers while adding, “We’s gotta tell Jack Jr. ‘bout us.”

“Jack Jr. huh?” Ennis muttered, starting to push the eggs off the frying pan and onto plates. Or, two plates and a bowl, considering they never got guests and Ennis didn’t care to go looking for their extra plates this early in the morning.

“Well, how’s you gonna tell us apart?” Jack said with a laugh, “‘sides, you always said you were gonna name your kid Junior.”

“Already got me a Junior, aint I?” Ennis asked.

“Well, you gots yourself two Junior’s now Ennis. You gonna deal with it like a man?” Jack asked and Ennis frowned at him. He had no idea what this had to do with him behaving like a man, considering it was Junior.’s problem, not his.

But, Ennis heard what Jack was saying without saying it. Was he going to step up and be the father Monroe obviously couldn’t be? Ennis already knew that answer.

He tried it out in his head a little. Ennis Del Mar had a daughter and a son. Alma Jr. and Jack Jr. He had a little boy.

The little boy he’d been hoping for when Alma had come to him crying and saying that she was pregnant. That, at only just barely twenty years old, he was going to be a father. He had the little boy he’d been hoping for when Alma had said a second time that she was pregnant again, this time with fewer tears but a terrifyingly resigned look on her face.

He’d always wanted a son and now he had one. Mulling it over in his head, he tried to let everything that Anne had said start to sink in.

He was still a father to two beautiful kids who were going to grow up to lead happy and healthy lives. He still had Jack, he still had the ranch and Alma and Monroe still lived a half dozen counties over. Nothing had changed. It really hadn’t.

Besides, Junior had never really been like his older sister. Not really, at least. Alma Jr. had always liked braiding hair and playing with the doll that she’d gotten on her second birthday while Jack Jr. had gone outside to make a mess in the mud underneath that horrible swing set that was set up outside the laundromat. When Alma Jr. had wanted to play pretend in the parking lot, Jack Jr. had been swinging on the swing set so violently it tipped back and forth, crashing back to the ground with laughter.

Ennis had always just chalked it up to how a second child was supposed to behave. Because Alma Jr. was always like how Ennis remembered Merle and Jack Jr. always behaved like how he remembered K.E. He’d always imagined that if he and Alma had had a third child, that that child would turn out like him. Anti-social, timid, a little slow at times. That was one of the reasons they hadn’t gone for a third right away. Eventually never.

Ennis couldn’t bear creating a child that was like himself. He just couldn’t. But now, throwing the spatula into the sink, Ennis realized that he’d always known that his little Jenny was a Jack. He’d just never seen it until someone had connected the dots for him. Before Junior realized it himself.

Setting the bowl down at his own spot and the two plates in front of Jack and Junior, Ennis sat and tried to catch his lover's eye.

He was ready. Anne was right. If they ever expected Junior to trust them, they’d have to give him something to believe.

When his man looked up, Ennis knew he saw the look and understood it. They’d only been sharing it for years. From the second they’d reunited in 1967 to when he’d divorced Alma in 1975 and Jack had driven all the way from Texas to start a new life with him. The, “are we going to tell them?” look was one he and Jack knew well.

“Junior,” Ennis started, “We’s...uh...we’s wanted ta’ tell ya’ somethin’.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway!


	7. Chapter 7

Jack Twist took a sip of his coffee and as he placed the old tin mug from their camping supplies onto the wood table, he heard Junior ask, “Are you sending me home to ma’? You know she won’t take me back.”

“Not what we’re stayin’,” Jack spoke up, taking the conversation over from Ennis. He knew the slightly older man was already starting to clam up, just like his kid was doing across the table from the two of them.

They were so similar, Jack was beginning to realize. Junior and Ennis had the so many of the same mannerisms - the anxious twisting of whatever hat had just come off of their head, the inability to look someone in the eye for too long - and Jack suddenly wondered if Alma Jr. was anything like her mom.

While he knew that Ennis wanted to tell Junior about the two of them - which honestly, Jack couldn’t wait for either - he wondered what life in Riverton had truly been like for the two baby Del Mars over the years since Ennis had left. Sure he knew that Alma had gotten a stable job and had met Monroe, but that didn’t mean that just because Monroe made more money than Ennis’s on-again, off-again construction and ranching jobs, that meant he was suited to raising two kids that weren’t even his. This was close to the sixth time that Junior had brought up not wanting to go home to his mom and Monroe and Jack had a sneaking suspicion it had less to do with not being allowed back and more to do with how the two of them treated the kids.

Though right now, it wasn’t Jack’s place to ask. He knew how frustrated he’d get as a kid when his teachers at school would ask him why he was favouring a leg or where the latest bruise on his neck had come from. How quickly young Jack Twist could go from not wanting to shut up to silent as the grave.

It was pretty obvious that Junior didn’t exactly trust them yet, with the only concession being that they’d found the poor kid asleep again at the table when they’d come back inside from having a smoke on the porch. Ennis only slept when he felt safe, like the cattle and horses they raised on their ranch, and Jack figured that Junior was much the same way.

“We just wanted ta’ tell ya’ somethin’, ‘bout me and your da. But ya’ gotta promise that ya’ aint gonna go tellin’ no one, else we’s gonna be in real danger,” Jack said, putting his fork down on the table and looking Junior right in the eyes, the kid holding the gaze for longer than Ennis thought was possible.

“I get it Mr. Twist,” Junior agreed, eyes wide and looking more concerned now than had been before - a feat that Jack didn’t realize was even possible.

“Did your da’ ever tell you ‘bout when we worked together out on Brokeback?” Jack asked and the teen just shrugged, like Ennis would do anytime he only knew part of an answer to a question but didn’t want to say anything, mulling over every single word a hundred times over.

“I met your da’ out on Brokeback in the summer of ‘63” Jack continued, “but that fall, your da’ was headin’ back ta’ Riverton ta’ marry your ma’ and I didn’t see him again ‘till I came through Riverton for work in ‘67. We both ended up divorced by ‘75 and I came to his house - that old thing out in the middle of nowhere - and we talked. Think I even met you and your sister.”

At that, Jack did get a nod from Junior. Now, he knew that Junior was actually paying attention.

“We came out here and bought this ranch together,” Jack said, watching as the proverbial gears inside Junior’s head started turning.

“Junior,” Ennis’s raspy voice said finally, “you know how Alma and Monroe love each other?”

“I guess,” Junior muttered back. Jack smiled to himself. Like father, like son.

“I feel that way ‘bout your da’,” Jack took over again.

“So you’re queers?” Junior asked.

“You could say tha’, Junior, yeah,” Jack replied.

“Thought my sister was Junior,” the teen muttered, looking down at his hands and picking at the loose thread on the hat again.

“You’re both Junior ta’ me now,” Ennis said, “We want youse ta’ stay here with us Junior, if ya’ want. ‘Sides, already gots me a Jack, now I got a Alma Jr. and a Jack Jr.”

“You really want me to stay here?” Junior asked, eyes widening.

“Ya’ Junior, wouldn’a want nothin’ more,” Ennis replied, “‘Course, if youse wantin’ ta’ stay here, we’s gonna have ta’ find ya’ a way ta’ get your school.”

“Right,” Jack found himself agreeing with an eager nod, “We’d love ta’ have ya’ stay here, but jus’ cause your da’ and me aint gots no schoolin’ aint mean youse gonna miss that.”

The three of them sat unmoving for a couple more seconds and Jack could almost hear the gears in Ennis’s head-turning, while he was pretty sure that Junior wasn’t actually thinking anything. If he was, the thoughts weren’t going far and his eyes still remained lifeless.

“So…,” Junior started again, reaching out and grabbing for the previously untouched mug of coffee Ennis had poured him. While it was probably cold by now, Jack doubted that Junior would care. It gets to the point that caffeine is caffeine, regardless of how warm it was. Jack learned that quick out on Brokeback.

But when Junior seemed unable to form the words to continue, Jack asked, “Yeah kid?”

“You...you and da’ likin’ each other...was that why youse both got divorced?” Junior asked.

“Kinda,” Ennis muttered, “your ma’ and I aint liked each other for a real long time.”

“I married Lureen ‘cause I had ta’. But when her old man told me ta’ get lost or not wake up again, that was a real easy choice ta’ make,” Jack added before saying, “Neither of should have got married in the first place. We’s were nineteen and had ta’ do it ‘cause we’d be in a whole heap ‘a trouble if we didn’t.”

“I love you and your sister Junior,” Ennis continued, “I don’t regret having the two of you. Never. I miss y’all down in Riverton a whole lot.”

Jack watched Ennis’s face contort like how it would when he’d accidentally missed his mark while hammering in fence posts or repairing the wires. He knew that the slightly older man missed his kids a lot. Talked about them enough.

Jack missed Bobby dearly, but the little boy seemed to not barely even know him nowadays. Bobby, who was almost the same age as Junior, had spent too many years of his life without Jack. Even before he divorced Lureen, he’d spent more time at the rodeo, working, or on fishing trips with Ennis than he’d ever spent with Bobby. His last trip to Texas proved that. Bobby had just been itching to get away from him, it seemed. He was becoming his own man and wanted nothing to do with his dad anymore.

He was just glad that Junior had come to Ennis. Come all the way to Signal to find the man he’d barely seen in years. Jack wondered why, aside from necessity, that Junior had made that choice. He wondered, at some base level, that in a way, he had known that his father was more like him than either of them would admit out loud. Junior must have known that somehow. Sensed it in a way that only kids could.

“Missed ya’ too da,” Junior said, looking up from his mug of coffee and smiling.


	8. Chapter 8

Jack Del Mar Jr. smiled into his eggs and pushed them around. He wasn’t particularly interested in eating at the moment, and lukewarm coffee wasn’t appealing either, but he figured that his dad and his dad’s friend would want him to eat at least something. His mother and Monroe always got mad whenever he didn’t eat what they gave him. Jack Jr. hated to admit it, but sometimes, he missed the days that they’d eat canned apple sauce, corn, soup and beans at every meal.

Leaning his head on a hand, Junior took a small bite of eggs and chewed them thoroughly, making sure that the two men saw that he was actually eating, but not doing anything that would upset his stomach from where it was rolling back and forth in his gut.

Jack Jr. realized that he liked it when his dad and Jack Twist called him Junior, and he didn’t think it was just because it was better than his mother and Monroe had ever done. Junior was pretty sure that he’d met his namesake.

For as long as Junior could remember, it was obvious to him that his older sister was named after their mother. But, Junior had always wondered where they’d gotten Jane, and by extension, Jenny from. Then, when Junior realized that the name Jenny didn’t sit right in his stomach, taking the male version of his birth name only made sense. To Junior, ‘John’ always sounded way too formal, but Jack was just right.

Now, looking across the table at the two older men, one looking into his breakfast intently and the other’s eyes fixed on his face, Junior saw their relationship for what it was. It wasn’t just that Jack Twist was a guy and it wasn’t just that he was decently good looking. His father loved Jack Twist for what was inside him and always had. They'd known each other from before his parents had married, and his father had given him his name to keep a little bit of the man he loved by his side at all times. It made sense, in an odd way, to Junior now. 

His father had said that he never regretted having kids, but Junior could see in his eyes that he regretted marrying his mother. That he wished he’d never had to have married Alma Beers in the first place. But Junior was glad to have made the decision to come out to Signal to find his father. He didn't regret leaving his mother and Monroe behind in Riverton. Not one little bit. 

Junior would make the argument that mom and Monroe weren’t really good for anything at all anyways. They were more interested in each other than they were with him and Alma Jr. Though, knowing what Junior knew now, about his dad’s true inclinations towards the same sex, it made sense that his mother would take affection where she could get it. Junior doubted his father showed his mother much affection, because, for someone who claimed to love Jack Twist, his father really didn’t show it in any way.

Thinking back, Junior couldn’t really remember a time when he saw his father genuinely smiled or offered to talk on the phone. Sure he’d crack a smile or two when he and Alma Jr. had done something goofy out in the parking lot of the apartment and he did smile when he was watching the rodeo on the television, but they were mostly fleeting. Like he just couldn’t force his mouth out of its characteristic frown for too long or else it would start to hurt him.

He smiled a lot now, Junior was starting to see. His father had been pretty brief with Jack that morning, but out on the porch, they’d both been smiling again. When he was cooking the eggs, he was smiling to himself and when Junior came back from washing his hands, they were certainly smiling at each other again. His father’s cheeks were even sporting a little colour for the first time since he’d shown up less than a day earlier. 

“Junior, ya’ aint hungry?” Jack asked, his fork pointing towards Junior’s plate, which was still barely touched.

Looking up, he noticed that both his father and Jack’s plates were both completely finished.

“Um...my stomach isn’t…,” Junior started to mutter, trying to come up with an excuse for why he didn’t feel like eating.

He bet that it was the nerves from the past couple of days wearing off. Having been wound so tight for three days and then suddenly nothing made him feel like someone had carved a hole into his stomach.

“Is okay if ya’ aint feelin’ up ta’ eatin’,” his father said with a look at Jack. Junior wasn’t sure what that look, in particular, meant between the two of them, but Jack nodded.

“How ‘bout this, I’ll go and put the plate in the fridge and if ya’ get hungry, ya’ can heat it up. Sounds good?” Jack asked and Junior nodded in response. Jack reached out and grabbed the plate, opening the fridge and putting it in what little space there was left.

“So this is what we’s were thinkin’ for today,” Jack continued once the fridge door closed, “Your da’s gotta go out on the range ta’ check on our heifers, and I’s gotsta go inta’ town ta’ settle some winter payments. Your choice, ya’ wanna ride with your da’ or come inta’ town?”

“Can I go with my da’?” Junior asked, knowing it was the right answer when his father’s cheeks lit up with a splash of colour and a smile tugged at his lips from where he was still sipping on his coffee. He looked happy that Junior had wanted to go with him.

“Just warnin’ ya’, your da’ aint talks lots out on the range,” Jack said with a laugh.

“I talk plenty rodeo,” his dad rasped, looking up from his coffee long enough to throw a teasing grin at the other man, before returning to his metal mug.

“Was just buggin’ ya’ cowboy,” Jack said, before asking, “ya’ got any clothes other than that Junior?”

“Not really,” Junior admitted. The jeans he was wearing were a pair of Alma Jr.’s that he’d borrowed once and never returned, the bell-bottoms rolled up and tucked in so they didn’t look so feminine, the material bunched in all the right places. His sweater was one that his grandma had knit years ago that was a light blue material and, but the shirt underneath was a pale peach colour and just so happened to be what he was wearing when Monroe had told him to leave. There was only one other shirt in his bag and a winter jacket.

“How ‘bout ya’ go with Jack into town and the two of ya’ get Junior some new clothes?” his father offered, looking into his mug of coffee like he wanted to throttle something. Or someone. It was the look he used to get in his eyes seconds before he would hiss out an angry warning at his mother for something.

“Ya’ sure friend?” Jack asked, giving his father another look that Junior couldn’t read fully.

“‘Course,” he replied like Jack was being slow on purpose, “Junior needs clothes.”

Sitting in the passenger seat of the truck that he’d arrived to the ranch in just hours before, bumping back down along the same road, Junior felt a lot more settled than last time. Wrapped in his father’s old beige jacket that Junior remembered from before the divorce and a pair of Jack’s rodeo pants - which Jack claimed were tighter for a reason - he found himself looking out the window and taking in what he could see around him for the first time.

Signal really was a beautiful area. It was so much nicer than the dreary and flat Riverton that Junior had never travelled more than one county over from in his entire life. He had no idea that getting just a half dozen counties closer to the Rocky Mountains, that there were all these colours of green. Even the trees were a different type of green from the ones in Riverton.

Pointing out the dashboard window towards a set of mountains as they pulled up to a stop sign, Jack said, “Can ya’ see them mountains out there?”

“Yeah,” Junior replied, looking towards where Jack was pointing.

“And can ya’ see the one that looks like it has three peaks ta’ it?” Jack continued, leaning forwards into the steering wheel, a soft look in his eyes.

“Mhmm,” Junior replied again.

“That’s Brokeback Mountain,” Jack said, “The namesake for the ranch, where I met your da’ twenty years ago.”

“Did you...,” Junior started, before clearing his throat and trying again, “did ya’ know my da’ was the one...you know, when ya’ met him out here?”

“Sure did kid,” Jack said, his face in a wide smile as he turned onto the paved highway, “second I laid eyes on him in the parking lot of Joe _fuckin_ ’ Aguirre’s trailer lot, knew he was the one."


	9. Chapter 9

Ennis Del Mar picked up the phone and dialled the only phone number in Riverton he knew, the second that Jack and Junior pulled out of the ranch.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want Junior to come with him out on the range, he’d actually have wanted nothing more, but his kid was wearing what were quite obviously his sister’s jeans, the old blue knit sweater from Grandma Beers that had been around since Ennis had been living with them, and that damn grey hat that Ennis was pretty sure was actually one of his that he’d left behind by accident. While Ennis wanted to show Junior the range that would likely become his one day if he wished, he needed to have Jack get his son some clothes and he had a couple of tasks to complete himself.

He needed to phone Alma. Not only to let her know that the only child of theirs still legally under her care was safe and sound with him, but that he was massively disappointed with her and Monroe. Junior was still their kid for goodness sake, and if Ennis could love him under whichever name he preferred, it didn’t sit right with him that Alma and Monroe couldn’t.

It was late enough in the morning now that Ennis wasn’t worried about waking anyone in the household and after a couple of rings, wondered if anyone was actually going to pick up.

“Hello?” Alma’s voice said into the phone once the call finally connected.

“Alma, its Ennis, we need ta’ talk,” Ennis said, wondering if Jack would punch him if he decided to light a cigarette in the house.

Probably would, considering Jack was trying to quit and the smell would only linger and make him crave a smoke again. Instead of doing that, Ennis wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder and poured himself another cup of coffee to help tide him over until he could have another smoke.

“Ennis, I thought I said I didn’t want you to phone here again,” Alma said and Ennis could hear the shuffling of the phone as if she was getting ready to hang up on him.

“Jack is here with me,” Ennis blurted before he could think through his choice of wording.

“Jack Nasty?” Alma snarled, “I knew that already.”

“Don’t you fucking dare call him that,” Ennis snarled and swore he could see red. Briefly, he wondered how he and Alma had lasted as long as they had.

“I can call him whatever I want because he made you the way you are,” Alma said back, “he took you away from me.”

“I’m not havin’ this talk with ya’ ‘gain,” Ennis said, scrubbing a hand over his face before continuing, “our youngest child. Jack Del Mar. He’s staying here at the ranch with me.”

“Her name isn’t Jack, don’t tell me you believe her lies,” Alma hissed, “her name is Jenny and she’s my little baby girl.”

“No. He’s not,” Ennis stated, “And since ya’ kicked him out, he’s not yours anymore either.”

“You made Jenny like this,” Alma said, her voice gradually getting more and more hysterical, “you and Jack Nasty! You did this Ennis you fucking nasty faggot! Knew I shouldn’t have let you name her Jenny! But you insisted! Said it was a family name!”

“Well,” Ennis said, trying to push the tears out of his eyes that were threatening to form and spill down his cheeks at any moment, “guess I know where ya’ stand on this. Just wanted ta’ let ya’ know that he’s safe. Seems like ya’ don’t really care ‘bout that though. Goodbye Alma.”

And with that, Ennis hung up the receiver. There was only so much of their fighting that he could handle nowadays. They used to be able to go at it like cats, way back in the day, for hours upon hours. Ennis just hoped that Monroe got along better with Alma than he ever did.

Frowning at the phone as if it could release the mysteries of the universe, Ennis wondered if he should bother sending the next 125$ child support cheque to Riverton, now that he had Junior with him. Though, at the same time, Ennis knew he would, because if he didn’t, Alma would certainly get the law involved, and that was just putting him and Jack at risk. He’d managed to keep Jack safe for the past eight years, and he wasn’t going to stop now.

Digging into the pocket of his jeans, Ennis pulled out his pack of cigarettes and reached for his mug of coffee off the counter before heading out their back door to the porch.

Standing in the cool morning air, he found himself looking out over the horizon towards Brokeback Mountain. Even though he could barely see the tips of the rock from his position he was in, Ennis knew exactly where it was. He’d only been looking towards it for the past eight years, remembering back to their first summer together.

It'd been scary at the time. Nineteen years old, engaged and looking for a job before committing to a life with a woman and his and Jack’s paths had gotten crossed forever. From that one rough night together to something deeper than they’d ever experienced to parting again, Ennis couldn’t imagine his life any differently now, but at the time, he had been terrified. Terrified to feel so deeply about another man. More than he’d ever felt for Alma.

It’d only been paralleled when he’d looked at Alma Jr. in the hospital for the first time. Holding that tiny life in his arms and looking down into small closed eyes and wondering how so much anger and internal hatred could have created something this precious.

Then Jack Jr. had come into their lives not even that much later and he realized he was falling in love for the third time. Jack and his two kids, those were the only people he had space in his heart for, and Ennis only wished he’d realized sooner.

He loved his kids without a doubt in his mind and he was grateful to have shared in as much of their early lives as he could, but the second he made the choice to move to Signal with Jack after the divorce, he knew he was practically kissing his court visitation days goodbye. Of course, there were still a few days that he was able to get over to Riverton and visit them, but the number of days he had to cancel was embarrassing.

Ennis regretted those days now. That he hadn’t been there for the two tiny lives that he’d helped create that were left alone in the world without their father. Of course, Alma had found Monroe, but that didn’t mean that he was their father. Because he wasn’t.

Ennis knew what it was like to grow up with someone who wasn’t his father acting like one. While K.E. had done his best to help raise him, he wasn’t anything like his father. Not that his father was a good person or fit to raise children anyways. He wasn’t. He was an abusive alcoholic and that was one of the first things that he and Jack had bonded over up on Brokeback. Fathers that were unfit to do their jobs, raising ranches that barely made a profit, having boys that were unlike their peers.

He remembered when Jack Jr. was in kindergarten and Ennis had been called into the office to speak with his teacher about his behaviour in class. Erratic and anti-social. Ennis had been in charge of that meeting since Alma was at work, and he’d sat there the whole time as the teacher talked about how his youngest would go from refusing to talk and interact in class from jumping from the top of the slide and crashing into classmates at the bottom. He’d been terrified that Junior was turning out to be like him.

It wasn’t the roughhousing on the playground that worried him, because, according to his logic, second children were supposed to act that way. It was the silence that followed that worried Ennis. That his kid was going to turn out like him.

As much as Ennis loved living with Jack and loved his life now, he never wanted one of his kids to grow up with the same fear of speaking that he had. It’d made Ennis worried sick that he’d done something to make Junior behave how he was at school. That something he had done had caused Junior to not want to talk, just like Ennis’s father had done.

He’d spent years thinking about it. He’d had years to think about it. As bad as his fights with Alma had gotten, he never took it out on his kids. Never. He made sure of it. He’d done some questionable things in his life but making his kids fear him, that was never something he’d done.

And now, Ennis had proof he had been worthy of being a father. Junior came to him because he thought he would be safer than in Riverton. The realization filled Ennis’s heart as he watched some smoke curl up over his head, into the bright blue shy.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise I haven't dropped off the face of this planet, I was just writing midterms.

Jack Twist pushed open the door to the general store and held it open for Junior to follow him inside. With the grey knit hat back on his head and Ennis’s jacket hanging off Junior’s thin shoulders, Jack bet this was what Ennis would have looked like as a young kid. Thin curly blond hair just barely sticking out from underneath the hat, brown eyes trained at the ground, Jack smiled at the young boy.

He’d never thought they’d actually have one of their kids living with him. Bobby had made it very clear that he wanted to stay in Texas with his mom, and, really, even if he had wanted to come with Jack out to Wyoming, the court probably wouldn’t let him until he was eighteen.

Ennis had always been torn up about his and Alma’s divorce. The fact that all of it had happened in the first place due to his insistence that they had to try to lead normal lives, it seemed to eat at Ennis more than anything. Jack wondered if Junior coming to live with them would maybe lessen the burden of some of that guilt. 

“Twist!” the shopkeeper called from behind the counter, waving at the two of them.

He could feel Junior tense beside him, just like his father did anytime that someone tried to start a conversation with him in public. Ennis had never been much for talking, having described it once like the feeling after getting the wind knocked out of you went you get bucked off a bull. Supposedly that was how he felt every single time he tried to open his mouth.

“McAsey,” Jack called back, not at all concerned that Junior was practically hiding entirely behind his much larger form, “Ya’ get the new brand ‘a feed in yet?”

“Not yet,” McAsey replied and Jack led the way towards the counter, hoping Junior would follow. When he heard small pattering footsteps from behind him, he knew he’d guessed right.

“Well, it gonna be in soon?” Jack asked, leaning over the counter and looking at the older man.

“I dunno,” he replied, “‘sides, I aint sellin’ ya’ no feed till ya’ settle your winter tab.”

“Well lucky for you McAsey, tha’s exactly wha’ I’m here ta’ do,” Jack snarked back, pushing himself off the countertop and reaching into the back pocket of his jeans for his wallet and the folded cheque he’d stashed there. Forcefully placing the paper on the counter, Jack slid it towards McAsey. Ennis’s neat handwriting across the front, the name of their ranch stencilled onto the header line.

“That the right ‘mount?” Jack asked.

As much as McAsey drove him crazy, he did want to pay him the right amount before the older man made good on his random threats to call the law on him. In his right mind, Jack knew that McAsey was just joking around, but it always got Ennis riled up and made him a little jumpy for at least a couple of days afterwards. Jokes like that, whether or not they were made true, could cost him and Ennis their lives. Jack didn’t like thinking that way.

“Yeah Twist,” McAsey said, snatching the paper off the countertop and beginning to key the winter number into the register.

“Cate ‘round?” Jack asked, referencing McAsey’s wife.

“In one ‘a them back rooms, ya’ need somethin’ from her?” McAsey asked.

“Need ta’ get some stuff for this one,” Jack said, motioning backwards over his shoulder to where Junior was standing completely unmoving, still tightly wrapped in Ennis’s old jacket with a pair of jeans way too big for his thin frame just barely hanging off his hips.

“New hand or something?” McAsey said, not looking up from where he was keying in the numbers.

“Nah, Ennis’s kid’s stayin’ with us for now,” Jack replied, “but unless ya’ wanna help me with it, can youse just call ya’ wife?”

“Damn Twist, youse in a hurry or somethin’?” McAsey asked.

“Well I aint want ta’ spend all day in town,” Jack replied, “got other things ta’ do.”

“Hold your horses, I’ll go and fine her,” McAsey said, turning over his shoulder to head into the backroom of the store, finally done adding their cheque tally to the register.

Doin’ okay?” Jack asked, facing Junior.

Looking at the tiny version of Ennis, Jack wondered if it’d be a wise idea to stop at the barber’s in town to get him a quick haircut, because, as it stood right at that moment, it was quite obvious to anyone with a set of eyes that Junior had done it himself. Yeah, Jack decided, that was what they’d do after they picked up some clothes.

Junior just shrugged and Jack turned back to where McAsey was returning from the back room with Cate. Jack had always liked Cate. She was a little younger than McAsey, but she was a lovely lady and would always smile and wave to him and Ennis whenever they crossed paths in town. Around Ennis’s birthday, she’d bake him up some cherry loaf, which Jack had never quite learned how to make properly, but the man had the tooth for it anyway.

“Mornin’ Jack,” Cate said, popping open the desk wall and rounding the counter, turning to Junior and saying “lets go find you some clothes, okay?”

“Yes ma’am,” Junior whispered, looking back towards Jack.

“Go on,” Jack said, motioning towards where Cate had started walking.

Junior didn’t move, his expressive greenish-grey eyes watching Jack’s, a look crossing them that Jack hadn’t seen in a long time. He recognized the look like the same one that Ennis had given him their entire last ride down Brokeback in ‘63. The fear of losing sight of someone and then never seeing them again. Junior was scared that Jack was going to leave him behind.

Instead of saying anything and potentially scaring Junior even more, Jack smiled at him, stuffed his hands deep into the pocket of his jeans and started walking after Cate. Thankfully, Junior then moved and they headed back into the clothing section.

“Two pairs of jeans, three pairs of shirts?” Cate asked, digging through their extremely limited racks of clothes.

Jack nodded with a smile before adding, “socks, underwear and a jacket too Cate.” Thinking through their collection of clothes at home, he knew that they had an extra hat - Jack’s brown one - a pair of boots that he was pretty sure would fit Junior, and a plethora of work gloves, so thankfully they didn’t have to worry about getting those. Maybe later, by the end of the summer, they’d get him some winter clothes, if he chose to stick around until then.

“Well, my youngest is about your size,” Cate said, grabbing a couple of pairs of jeans off the shelf, “Are you the Bobby Twist I hear so much about?”

“No,” Junior replied in true Ennis fashion and Jack couldn’t help but laugh.

“Does the kid even look like me, Cate?” Jack asked, biting back his smirk and motioning towards Junior with a genuine smile, “can’t you tell this is a Del Mar through and through?”

“Suppose I could have guessed that,” Cate said, handing over two pairs of jeans, adding, “these should fit just fine. You might have to ask your daddy for a belt though, not sure they’re gonna fit on your hips.”

“Thanks, ma’am,” Junior said, taking the thick jeans into his arms, unwrapping them for the first time from Ennis’s coat.

By the time they got back to the ranch, Junior was drooping again, looking exhausted. He probably was, considering that it didn’t seem like he’d slept his entire journey from Riverton to Signal, but before Jack was going to let Junior go crash on the couch, he wanted to get him to change into his new clothes to show Ennis. To help Ennis solidify in his mind that he had always had the little boy that he had wanted when Alma had first gotten pregnant.

“Junior,” Jack said, pushing open the door to their house with his shoulder and letting the small boy in, “Do ya’ think youse can go change into a pair a’ these for your da’?”

“Why?” Junior asked, holding the paper bag close to his chest, just like he’d done the entire ride back to the ranch from the store.

“Junior,” Jack said again, looking down into those soulful greenish-grey eyes, “I want your da’ ta see that youse the little boy he always wanted when your ma’ got pregnant. I think he needs ta’ see the proof tha’ he’s gots what he’s always wanted and always has had it.”


	11. Chapter 11

“Morning Junior,” Ennis said when he heard the soft pattering footsteps coming from the recently cleaned out spare room that morning.

In bare feet, but already changed out of his pyjamas, Junior walked out into the kitchen, rubbing at his eyes. The sun hadn’t even crested the ridge of the mountains out the kitchen window yet, the singular light above the table casting a glow that barely brightened up where Ennis was standing at the stove.

“Morning dad,” Junior said, going over to the cupboards where he now knew the mugs, plates and glasses were stored, one extra of each having been taken out of their storage box and washed up.

“Sleep well?” Ennis asked, not looking up from the frypan where he was doing up nine sausage links and three eggs.

He was planning on heading out to the easternmost part of their range today and was likely going to be away from the house before Jack even got up. He knew that if he didn’t cook something for Jack, he’d either come back to the entire kitchen smelling like he’d burnt something or the slightly younger man would just eat a couple of plain slices of bread. Slices of bread that Ennis needed to make sandwiches out of.

Ennis wanted to ask Junior if he wanted to come out on the range with him today. See the eastern pastures, maybe get up on a horse. After the last offer Ennis had made, the day that Jack and Junior had gone into town, he hadn’t offered again since. It only recently occurred to him that Junior wouldn’t know how to even ride a horse. Sure they had a couple of extras around that Ennis would ride on alternating days, but that still didn’t solve the fact that his youngest had never ridden before.

They’d moved into town just weeks before Junior was born, Alma claiming that their small rented house on the corner of the range that Ennis worked for at the time was not big enough to raise kids in. Then they’d moved into an apartment. Ennis didn’t understand that. Not one little bit. The colicy old man that Ennis worked for said that that was just how women worked, but looking back, Ennis wondered if there had been something else at play. Trying to convince Ennis to find a regular paying job or something of the likes.

Still, he’d been able to get Alma Jr. out on a horse on occasion. It was rare, as the young girl was never too fond of the large beasts, but still, she’d had that chance. Junior never had. He was a city kid, through and through.

“Yeah, thanks,” Junior replied, pouring a cup of coffee before resting it down on the kitchen table where the paper from the day before was still sitting. Ennis heard the ruffle of a page-turning and remembered that he would have to bring Junior down into town sometime soon and get him registered for school. The kid was too smart to not get his diploma.

“Do you –,” Ennis started, cutting himself off when he felt the barbs climbing his neck. Clearing his throat and trying again, he said, “I’m headin' out ta the east range today. You...you wanna come?”

“Sure,” Junior replied.

Ennis said nothing in reply but instead moved to grab the plates from the cupboard. Dishing out the food, leaving one plate on the counter and bringing two with him, he placed one in front of Junior. Ennis smiled at his youngest child as he started digging into his egg, finally seeming to have found the appetite he hadn’t had that first couple of days under their roof.

He’d also gotten his voice and joking nature back, often teaming up with Jack to poke fun at Ennis. Not once, he’d wondered what Junior and Jack talked about when he left them at the house alone to go check on their beasties.

“Just guy stuff,” Jack would always say, whenever Ennis caught them cracking up about something. While he wanted to be in on the jokes, he was glad that Junior was bonding with Jack.

He’d never imagined that Jack would have the opportunity to meet either of his kids. It’d just never even been in the realm of possibilities until Jack picked up Junior on the side of the road in the middle of the night last week.

He still had yet to scold Jack for picking up hitchhikers, and to inform Junior of the dangers of hitchhiking, because he was just glad that both of his Jack’s were safe. The two people he loved more than anything were in the same place at the same time, for the first time, and Ennis didn’t want to have to play the bad guy. Not yet. He just wanted to take everything in and appreciate what they had for the time being.

“I have to go shave,” Ennis muttered, finishing up his last sausage, “then we can head out, yeah?”

“Okay,” Junior chirped, grabbing his cleared plate. Stacking it on top of Ennis’s in the sink, the boy headed back down the hall to his room, probably to go in search of a pair of socks.

Upstairs, Ennis had pressed a couple of kisses to Jack’s hairline. Just enough to cause the black-haired man to stir with the motion and grumble about it being too early for Ennis to be heading out.

“Junior and I are gonna go out ta’ the east range,” Ennis whispered, leaning against Jack a little and pressing one more kiss against his sleeping beauty’s forehead.

“Want me ta’ bring youse lunch?” Jack muttered, rolling over properly, blue eyes opening and looking up at Ennis, just like he always would, back in the heat of the summer on Brokeback.

“If you don’t mind,” Ennis muttered, standing up a little.

“I’ll meet you at the pond?” Jack asked, eyes already slipping back closed again.

Ennis grunted in affirmation.

When Ennis got back downstairs, Junior was sitting on the back bench, feet already in his shoes, jacket across his lap. The green plaid shirt he’d chosen to wear hung a little big off of Junior’s shoulders and with the top button undone, Ennis could see the collar of a white undershirt. One of Ennis’s belts had been unceremoniously gifted to Junior to help keep the pairs of jeans up on his hips properly, and he was always pleased to see that the shirts were neatly tucked in.

Not that Ennis really would have cared either way, but there was something in his chest that tugged tightly every time he noticed that Junior did something in an almost copycat style to either him or Jack. Tucking in his shirts was just one of them. The way Junior wore the hat Jack had given him was almost an exact replica of how Jack wore his - tilted back a little and resting high on his head.

While Junior was sixteen already, Ennis felt proud of the opportunity he and Jack had finally been given to raise a kid of their own. He remembered back a week to when he’d gotten back home from the range. The day that Jack and Junior had gone into town to settle the winter payments and get Junior some clothes of his own. Junior had been curled up, asleep, on the couch, but he’d been wearing a new pair of jeans and a grey shirt. His blond curled hair looked like it had gotten neatened and trimmed up properly, not longer matted from the grey hat and cropped a little closer to his head.

Ennis had blinked twice before walking across their living room area towards his little guy. He’d rested gently on the sofa and reached out to soothe a couple of the curls away from those closed eyes like he used to do when Alma Jr. and Junior were younger. Back in Riverton. Back before Jack had come back to him. When he’d thought he and Alma could make it work. That he could lead a normal life after what he and Jack had had out on Brokeback.

Smoothing his hand through the curls, two greenish-grey eyes blinked open and looked up at him. When a small smile crossed his little guy’s features and Junior had whispered, “do you like my new shirt dad,” Ennis felt some tears spring to his eyes.

He wasn’t one for crying or showing much emotion at all, but for whatever reason, that small, quiet question had created some feeling in his chest that he didn’t know how to name. Looking down at Junior, bundled up in his grey shirt, Ennis felt something click into place in his brain.

Jack Del Mar Jr. It just seemed right. Like that was how it was supposed to have been, all this time.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter finally! 
> 
> School picked back up again, so it took a while to get this done, but I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Jack Del Mar Jr. flipped the worn and beaten cover of his book shut, remembering the page number and stuffing it back into his canvas bag. Not exactly a backpack, but it had been the best that was kicking around considering he’d forgotten about a bag until the day before he’d started eleventh grade at the Signal County High School.

As the empty school bus lurched to a stop, Junior stood from his seat and walked down the isles to where Ken had opened the door. Last stop on the route, first on first off, Junior had taken to reading whichever book he’d brought home from school with him out loud to Ken, the bus driver, during the twenty minutes of desolate silence on the drive between the Holden Ranch stop and his. Ken never complained, so Junior figured he didn’t mind.

“Have a good evening kid,” Ken said, watching as Junior jumped to the ground, pulling the grey hat onto his head.

“‘Evenin’ Ken,” Junior chirped, waving goodbye as the bus door squeaked shut and it rumbled down the road.

Boots crackling on the gravel highway as he walked towards the carved wood sign that he knew his dad had made years ago, Junior smiled to himself. _Brokeback Ranch._ Passing the white and red painted wood, he headed up the long road onto the property, the trees and shrubs lining the road casting an eerie shadow on the ground. Canvas bag over his shoulder, fall wind blowing through the trees, Junior tucked his lengthening brownish blond curls back underneath where they were escaping his cap.

Once he crested the last hill, Junior caught sight of the house, tucked behind another patch of trees, with all three of the trucks parked on the flattened out set of wood planks that they’d laid down that summer. After four weeks straight of rain, the mud and gravel had washed away and the decision to make a proper parking area was made for them. It’d taken another week for the land to dry out enough for their boots to not sink into the mud and another week to lay the planks, but it’d been worth it in the end.

The house, which Junior had come to start thinking of as his home now was nothing like what he’d felt back in Riverton. Not even close. That old apartment over the laundromat was cramped, and Monroe’s house had been stifling. Junior had hated both of them, without his dad and then with Monroe.

But he liked Brokeback Ranch. He liked it a lot. It was calm, peaceful and when he’d had a hard day at school, he could come back, get Copper out of the barn and they could go riding until supper. Junior found it helped clear his head. No wonder Dad had come back out here.

Looking towards the barn, Junior could see him chopping up wood, jacket hanging off a nearby tree branch, horses standing in the pasture looking on with the kind of curiosity only large livestock seemed to have. Copper, the old horse he’d been riding since June, was amongst them, idly shuffling at some feed that had been dropped when Junior had fed them that morning. He was not nearly strong enough to cleanly pour out a bag of feed that was full without making a mess everywhere.

“Hi daddy!” Junior called, approaching the man Junior knew he’d never be anywhere equally as tall as, letting his lips pull up into a small grin.

When Dad heard him call, he turned, nodded in his general direction and swung his axe into the chopping log with enough force for it to stick. Grabbing his old jacket that Junior had borrowed on his first morning at the ranch, Dad stuffed his arms into the beige sleeves before flicking the collar and making it rest properly on his shoulders.

“‘Afternoon Junior,” Dad grunted, voice carrying easily over the space that Junior was quickly closing, “school go okay?”

“Yup,” Junior chirped before reporting, “got an A on my paper.”

“Congrats kid,” Dad said, taking a couple of final steps towards Junior to wrap his arm around his shoulders and pull him in the direction of the main house, “Ya’ worked real hard on it. Told ya’ youse real smart.”

“Thanks daddy,” Junior said as Dad cracked open the door and they stepped inside.

Kicking off his boots onto their tray and shrugging off his jacket, Junior called, “‘Evenin’ Poppa!”

He couldn’t remember exactly when he’d accidentally called Jack Twist "Poppa" for the first time, but he did remember that it had just slipped out. He remembered they were out on the range, checking on a line of the fence when it’d just happened. It’d just been natural and it’d just felt right. When he’d hurriedly asked Jack if it was okay, the man with the greying hair had smiled and with a tear in his eye, said he loved it. Said his own boy barely called him dad anymore and that he’d love if Junior did.

“‘Evenin’ my darlin’s,” Pop called from where he was working on supper in the kitchen. Junior could smell it.

Racing to his room to throw his bag at his desk before skidding back into the kitchen, Junior watched Pop passing Dad what looked like a sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

“You goin’ out on the range ta’night daddy?” Junior asked, pulling his chair out at the table and kneeling on it, trying to look into the bag that Dad had in front of him.

“Not jus’ your da’,” Pop explained from where he was wrapping up another sandwich, “gotta move the heifers down inta’ the lower pastures tomorrow. Get ‘em ready for the snows. Plannin’ on sleepin’ out there ta’night and get ta’ workin’ when tha’ sunrises.”

“If ya’ wanna come,” Dad grunted out, “less youse gotta get homework done.”

“O’course Junior,” Pop quickly cut in, dumping another wrapped sandwich into the bag, “if ya’ gotta do your work, you ‘nd Copper can meet us up there in tha’ mornin’.”

“Its okay Pop,” Junior said, “All my work’s done for now.”

“So its settled,” Dad added, “wanna go get changed, Junior? Bundle up warm, ya?”

Copper followed the rear of Pop’s horse, Lurie, nicely as they followed the fence lines up to the northeasternmost pasture where Junior could already see the cows gathering at the gates, excited to be doing something else for a change. Buckley, the older black stallion that Dad rode, was following behind at a distance. Probably at a pace just slow enough that Dad could check over the quality of the fencing as they rode.

They set up the tent off the back of Lurie’s saddle pack, the cows dispersing away from the fence, likely having realized that nothing was happening till the next morning, as Junior looked around for some twigs to use as kindling for the fire that Pop had wanted to have. Even though they brought already cooked food, he’d looked towards Dad, and with a soft smile, had whispered, “for old times sake?”

Looking back towards them now, Dad crouched to one side of the tent while examining it with a look on his face that said he didn’t like how it was leaning just a little to the left. The man never seemed to be satisfied with anything until he’d re-tried every single placement of every single piece of material. It’d been much the same that summer with the parking area for the trucks. It’d gotten to the point that he and Pop had spent more time sitting on the open bed of the blue and white truck, watching Dad scowl at the planks of wood.

Pop was using a small axe to split a couple of rounds of wood for their fire. Some of the logs that Dad had been chopping that afternoon that they’d strapped onto Copper for the occasion. He was kneeling near a ring of rocks that looked like they’d been in place for a while, like they’d been used before. Probably had been used before, as there were these rings near most of the pasture gates. Junior had noticed in the summer that Pop and Dad liked campfires when they moved the cattle. Liked campfires at the best of times. He was willing to bet that, given the choice, the two men would eat around one every night.

They sat around the fire until Junior felt himself nodding off, tired from a whole week at school. Standing to head into the tent, he smiled and said good night. Retreating not far from the heat of the fire, Junior paused before ducking into the tent, looking up into the sky, past the swirl of the smoke from the fire and the dancing embers.

Looking into the night sky, Junior could see triple the number of stars than back in Riverton. While he’d been looking at the same night sky for almost six months, it still amazed him every time. As he tugged off his hat, just about to duck into the tent, he looked over his shoulder towards the mountains and saw the moon poking out over the rocks. Smiling as the white light splashed across the range, Junior realized there was no place else in the world he wanted to be.

Safe, in the mountains of Wyoming, with two fathers who loved him, on land that was more beautiful than he’d ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for following this story and everything I've had to say about these characters. 
> 
> I hope you've all liked reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

**Author's Note:**

> ~~Fast Facts (if you missed anything in the story)~~
> 
> 1) Brokeback Mountain is canon until Ennis and Alma get divorced, that's when this story splits off. Instead of Jack and Ennis fighting in front of the girls, Ennis takes Jack up on his offer to get a ranch together somewhere. 
> 
> 2) This story takes place around 1983
> 
> 3) This was meant to be a shot one shot but somehow it turned into this. 
> 
> 4) Why this? It started with me wondering why Jenny was named Jenny (because its pretty obvious where Alma Jr.'s name came from). Jenny, while nowadays most often short for Jennifer, was more commonly short for Jane in the 60's and 70's. Well, what's the male version of Jane? John. What is a nickname for John? Jack. Ennis named his second child after Jack Twist. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.


End file.
